Andrew Goodman, activist who gave his life

Andrew Goodman

Date:

Tue, 1943-11-23

Andrew Goodman was born on this date 1943. He was a Jewish American civil rights activist.

He was from a well-known liberal New York City household. His family’s friends included Alger Hiss and Zero Mostel. While studying at Queens College, Goodman joined the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and volunteered to take part in its Freedom Summer campaign. Goodman was sent to Meridian, Mississippi, and on June 21, 1964, he and two of his friends, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, went to Longdale to visit Mt. Zion Methodist Church, which had been fire-bombed by the Ku Klux Klan because it was going to be used as a Freedom School.

On the way back to the CORE office in Meridian, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price arrested them. Later that evening, they were released from the Neshoba jail only to be stopped again on a rural road where a white mob shot them to death and buried them in an earthen dam. When Attorney General Robert Kennedy heard that the men were missing, he arranged for the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to go to Mississippi for answers. On August 4 of that year, agents found their bodies buried at Old Jolly Farm.

In October, Ku Klux Klan member James Jordon agreed to co-operate with the investigation. Eventually 19 men were arrested and charged with violating the civil rights of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price were included in the charge. On February 24, 1967, Judge William Cox dismissed 17 of the 19 indictments. The Supreme Court overruled him and the Mississippi Burning Trial started in October 1967.

On October 21, 1967, seven of the men were found guilty of conspiring to deprive Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney of their civil rights and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to ten years, but Sheriff Lawrence Rainey was acquitted.

Reference:
The African American Desk Reference
Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture
Copyright 1999 The Stonesong Press Inc. and
The New York Public Library, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pub.
ISBN 0-471-23924-0